The other white...

Sir James Wilberwend inherited his father's membership to Donkay, and whereas we are all familiar with the elder's "Collage of Sentiments from the Scottish Coast and Moors" the writings of his son are less quoted in academie halls. It may be that the younger was a bit more of a realist, but we still find him interesting. He submitted to Donkay everyday, never failing the 1 o'clock post, while his father posted only when "the heath-root shaketh my being". In following the younger's star we adhere to that dear old Donkay refrain: There's Balzacs everywhere, you just need to look in the right place.

I was just fastening up my buttons when Henry Coadsy, our poet, walked into the party. Well it wasn't quite yet a party, but the drawing room of some enterprising degree candidates who have set up a "Shanghaii style" massage parlour to help finance their end-of-the-term walking excursion to the low countries. Those of us who had arrived early were thus refreshed, while the late-comers had come prepared to dine and make conversation.

Now mind you, the night which was about to unfold was one where the elixir of truth seemed to flow among the wine, so that in making one's reply to a collegue's remark one was somehow inclined to marry wit to the truth, rather than use wit alone to make the usual clever escape into the verbal ether.

But it was precisely in this way vein of truth telling that we all discovered such a horrid thing about Mr. Coadsy. Personally I knew three principal facts about him before his revelation- the thesis on Pope, his recurrent absences from the faculty club on Saturdays and Sundays, and finally, though I might not have thought of this beforehand, that when one went to dine at his rooms it was almost inevitably pork cutlets which were served, with a heavy Burgundy, and of which the host always partook with a barely civil gusto.

Tonight it went like this- Shelby had made an offhand comment to the poet, something to the effect of 'where is it that you go to every weekend, you devil.' And Coadsy had replied "to my farm." We all laughed and said surely he might have some family land out there, but why term it with such modest affection? But the man insisted on calling it his farm and proceeded to go into great detail about the whole operation.

For you see it was not just a farm, but a hog farm, and his involvement was not just that of landowner overseeing operations but turned out to be, well, rather hands on. I can't tell you how many napkins were raised to mouths as he revealed some of the details, but none stranger than how he and his brother, the banker, each at a shockingly young age, had been placed in a wooden pit among five bull-pigs the size of their own selves with only a carpenter's hammer to defend themselves with. The pigs, quite intelligent, could always sense impending violence and became exceedingly agressive, but the boys weren't allowed out of the pit until the pigs were quite bludgeoned to death, (Fred it seems, once almost lost a foot) and then they could be sure that the knuckle they were chewing on after supper that night was from the same squealing mass that had heaved its final breath beneath him that afternoon.

Coadsy, trying to recover his standing, said it had instilled in him a sense of when to "make a go" at the reader in his poetry, but the shock would not subside. There was absolute silence, until I, if I may give myself the credit, saved the evening by saying, "and here I thought you had a lady in Brighton."